


A Long Way Down a Dusty Road

by shereadwhatshewrote



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean in Hell, Gore, Hell, M/M, Torture, end of season three, start of season four, writer's interpretation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-03-31 01:06:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3958687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shereadwhatshewrote/pseuds/shereadwhatshewrote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean didn't like to talk about hell, but he could sure remember every damned thing that happened to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Life Goes On

There wasn't a damn thing Sam could do to save his brother. It was all he could do to not collapse on the floor and sob like a he'd just lost the world, because fuck, he had. He watched, helpless, as unseen dogs ripped their way up one leg and began mangling his stomach and chest. And when the deed was done, so quickly, mercilessly done, Sam cried.  
He cried like he did when he was ten and had to change schools again. He cried like he was seven and wanted Dean to play ball with him, but John made him shoot targets instead. He cried like he was 18 again, freshly kicked out of the Family for wanting to go to college. He cried like when he found Jess on the ceiling. Most of all, he cried like when he almost lost Dean in the hospital, because Dean was such a part of him, holding him to this world like a rock tied to a balloon. Without him, he would surely float away, up into the atmosphere until he popped.  
But he didn't. He was still there, still in some family's now messy house, covered in scratches and newly forming bruises, surrounded by the smell of blood, surrounded by his dead brother's body.  
Oh, god, the body, Sam thought, letting his head fall back against the wall he'd curled against. What was he going to do? It wasn't like he could call 911 to bring the body to a morgue, and then to a funeral home. No, he was going to have to carry that still-warm corpse down the hallway and stairs, across the neighborhood to the Impala. When he got there, panting and heaving (but not from the cold or the weight of the body,) he couldn't lay it in the trunk like some sack of flour or something Low like that. No, he set him right in the passenger seat, laying down a towel across the seat, because, Dammit, Sammy, if he gets blood on his car, Dean would- oh. He pushes the thought away as he lays the body in there, stooping to set his hips in the seat right and angle his shoulders just so. He could be sleeping, Sam mused, closing his eyes with a shaking finger. He could be sleeping, if not for the blood speckled across his face and his intestines pulled out like tissue paper in a gift bag. Sam absentmindedly wiped the blood off one cheek away as he looked around, then folded himself into the driver's seat. God, it didn't feel right, didn't feel like he was supposed to be sitting in this place at all.  
And then he drove.  
He drove for eternities and hours, centuries and decades. He found a large field by and abandoned gas station that looked calm, peaceful even. He stopped then, trying not to note how Dean's body was starting to go rigid in the seat beside him, didn't think about the fact that he'd have to dig for hours until there was a hole big enough, didn't think about what might happen if someone drove by to see a man burying a body that'd been ripped to shreds hours outside the nearest town.  
He didn't think. He let his mind go numb, completely and utterly, painfully blank as his hands nailed together a crude coffin from the wood he found inside the gas station, didn't think as he pulled oh-so-carefully on Dean's slowly hardening arms and legs to get him to lay flat inside the wooden box, didn't think or ponder or wonder at the ache pulling his chest inwards.  
He only thought when he began digging. He had to think about the steady rhythm of his arms, the shape of the hole he was digging, had to think about how he was going to lower the coffin in once it was deep enough, had to think, had to think, had to think.  
Had to think about what to tell Bobby, oh god, what was he gonna say to Bobby? I'm sorry, Sam would say, trying not to let the salty tears swimming in his eyes escape, I'm sorry I let him go, I'm sorry I went with him, I'm sorry, I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry. I'm sorry I let this happen, I'm sorry I caused this, I'm sorry I had to be a fucking monster and start this.  
And still he dug.  
He dug until he was almost up to his eyes in the packed-in dirt, dug until it was finally deep enough. He climbed mechanically out of the grave, not allowing himself to feel the burn of his cramping muscles, didn't let himself cry again. Not yet.  
He hauled the wooden, splintery box by one end until it was at the short end of the hole. Then he slowly, slowly pushed until the edge was in the hole, tilted so it was scraping the bottom as he pushed. When the other edge of the box was just barely resting on the top side of the grave, he gave a gentle push forward until it fell completely within the hole. It landed with a solid thump, and a lighter, not-quite-all-there fwap a millisecond later. Sam tried to get the sound to stop ringing in his ears, but it stayed, like a stubborn gnat flying about his face. When finally he could move his arms from their place at his sides again, he picked up the shovel the last time, and began heaping the freshly upturned soil back to where it came from. With the first hollow thud, he gave a great shudder, then heaved another shovelful after the first.  
Sam didn't realize that there was no more dirt left in the pile until his shovel hit the hard ground and bounced off. He was lost in the motion, a blank slate of constant rhythmic movements of his arms and legs. He looked around and sighed, letting the mud-speckled shovel fall to his feet. Wearily moving towards the gas station was when he began to crumble. First, it was his chest closing in on itself, pulling the furthest points of his shoulders inwards, and the hot rock lodged in his throat was making it awfully difficult to breathe. Pieces of him were breaking, losing their ability to function properly. Why wouldn't his lungs fill completely up, why wouldn't his head stop pounding?  
The gas station hadn't been abandoned decades ago. Only six months or so had seen the last business conducted there, and all of the products were still in place. Sam'd only come for the bathroom, but a desire to stop thinking clearly led him to the junk food, and then the alcohol. Sitting in a dusty folding chair in the break room, he cracked open one can of beer, then another, and another until a whole case had disappeared down his throat. Only then, with his face on fire and eyes blurred, did he have the courage to touch the flip phone in his pocket. It seemed so fearsome then, the phone. Almost like it knew what he was going to say, and wanted to bite his ear off for it. Slowly, like he was trying not to anger it, Sam opened it, and selected a contact.  
"Hello?"  
"Hey, Bobby. I go'some bad news..."


	2. It's Gonna Be a Long Night, Son.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Dean first gets to hell, he feels like he's drowning in his own blood, which he just so happens to be doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, guys. This is probably going to be the most gore-y chapter, so please be careful! It's v graphic and I describe what's happening in hell, so... it's pretty bad. Enjoy!

When the hellhounds broke through the door, Dean didn't try to run away. Although he couldn't help but back up a little at their ferocity, he faced them straight on, keeping his face blank, trying not to show Sammy how scared he was. He felt when they first pulled him to the ground by their claws, stuck deep into his leg, could feel the pain, searing and pulling and burning, but he did not cry out. When they ripped open his stomach, pulling out the contents like rice spilling from a slit bag, he was as silent as possible, only letting a few small gasps escape from the onslaught. When his lungs began failing, he looked up at his brother's face for the last time, putting the agony out of his mind and trying to memorize his features in more detail than he'd ever tried to attain before.  
He knew when he died. It wasn't some peaceful fading out that he'd imagined. No, it was violently being pulled downward by the bloodthirsty dogs still trying to tear him to pieces, being thrashed back and forth, torn to bits as he was pulled ever further down.  
When finally the dragging stopped, he looked around. There wasn't much here, just green-gray fog and hooks on chains. These hooks, huge and serrated on the inside curve and sharper than needles, uncoiled themselves and moved towards him, twisting and whipping about like snakes. Dean tried to move away from them, but found that next to no movement was possible. The hooks buried themselves along his body, one in a shoulder, a foot, an arm. He didn't let himself scream, only clenched his jaw and tried not to squirm. After a few seconds, he felt his teeth crack, breaking from the pressure of his jaw muscles. He was alone, for a time, with the hooks wiggling and burying themselves ever deeper in his flesh. But then he came.  
He didn't know his name, not then, but he didn't seem to care. His face was mangled, torn and ripped and stitched together in ways humans would be incapable of surviving. It was as if he'd been whaled on for several decades, and let the resulting cuts get infected with every virus in existence. Later, after almost thirty years in the Pit, he'd learn his tormentor's name was Alistair.  
Alistair himself didn't do much to begin with. He had drawn a knife around Dean's abdomen, sliding along each side, curving around his hip bones. He lifted the resulting flap of skin from his abdomen, but didn't cut it off. He began slicing the skin into ribbons almost as thin as hair.  
Dean didn't start howling until the others came. The smell of fresh blood, clean and untainted, drew them like junkies to crackhouses. They swarmed around him, clawing, slicing, grabbing what they could and pulling, screaming the whole time. One of his arms was ripped clean from his body, and his eyes were soon gone from their sockets. Alistair sat back, watching, as he always did for their first times. It was immensely satisfying, to see not only the fresh meat break as their flesh was torn apart, but also to see how he could still whip up the older ones into a bloodlust frenzy.  
When they were finally done, and there wasn't much of anything left of Dean, everything seemed to pull together, like waves pulling off the shore. He breathed hard, looking around with eyes that were very much there and undamaged. He had a few moments alone, to look over himself, unharmed, but the pain was still fading away, like a thunderstorm starting to pass. He was on the hooks again, in different places, but biting into his flesh in a way that was almost becoming familiar.  
And then he was there again, Alistair, with sick grin, (at least, it looked like he might have been grinning,) and a proposition.  
"How's about you stop lettin' us slice you up, and you start doin' the slicin?" he sneered, twirling a new, shorter and rounder blade around one finger. Dean hesitated, caught between never wanting to feel that pain, that awful, all-over pain, and not wanting to hurt anyone. Everyone here was just like him, anyhow. So he swallowed, and said the only thing he could thing of, which is what Sammy would have said.  
"Fuck you!"  
Alistair smiled, and slowly lifted the knife to Dean's pelvis. He stuck the blade just under the skin and muscle starting at one crest of Dean's hipbone, and sliced him to the other. It was a small incision, clean, precise. But when he stuck his hand in and started feeling around, it was anything but surgical. Dean was screaming a broken man's scream and thrashing around, making it difficult for him to get a solid grip on the slick intestine. When he finally did, he pulled, bringing the tube out, and slicing it as far down as possible, cutting it off near his pelvis on one end. He continued to pull on it, wrapping the loose end around one of Dean's legs as he went. He pulled until he was past the large intestine, past the small intestine. He pulled until the stomach was just starting to crest the incision and he could see Dean's throat being pulled down. He smiled, then, enjoying the sight before viciously yanking downwards one last time, tearing the esophagus from its place. Dean sputtered, spewing blood from now two places, tears streaming from his eyes like a dam had burst.  
"Please," he mouthed around the blood, "please."  
Alistair moved around so his twisted face was next to his. "What was that, Deany boy? Please what?"  
Dean's face twisted and contorted as he turned his face away, ashamed at how close he had come to cutting up some other poor soul who'd landed himself in this place.


	3. Dams Aren't the Only Stuctures that Break, You Know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't updated this in a while. Don't worry, the Deancas is coming soon!

Thirty years. Thirty god-damned years of having his spleen ripped out and shoved down his throat, thirty years of his hands being dismantled joint-by-joint. Thirty years of swimming through acid and swallowing barbed wire and anything else that son of a bitch Alistair could think of.  
Dean was sick of it.  
Year thirty-one started, and he couldn't hold back anymore. He couldn't take it. When Alistair offered to stop breaking him every day, he said yes. It was whispered, then repeated louder in case he didn't hear. Yes, yes, let it stop, let me start, let me out!  
After he was whole again, he looked around. No serrated hooks in sight, no knives or guns or hammers, except for the one he felt in his hand.  
It was his knife. One he'd had since he was a kid, one that John'd given him when he was eleven. It was heavy in his hand, almost too heavy. He lifted it, looking at the tiny nicks and bumps that he'd placed on the blade over the years. A small whimper made him look up from his examination.  
"P-please," the old man whimpered, looking lost and slightly out of place with his cheery bright yellow 'Jesus loves YOU!' shirt stained an unmistakable red-brown color. "Please h-help me. I need t-to get out of h-here!"  
Dean looked away, disgusted. How was he supposed to do this? This poor old man had probably done nothing but been in the wrong place at the wrong time.  
It's okay, a voice whispered off to his left. He's not as innocent as he looks. Two young girls, aged before their time because he needed to get his rocks off, the voice simpered, growing fainter with every word. Then it was sharp and loud with a single word:  
Now!  
Dean grimaced, slashing the knife across the man's abdomen, then stopped, studying the row of red sliding downwards. Was he feeling... relief? Sickened, but trying to get his mind off it, he stuck the knife in again, and pulled upwards from the bottom rib to the top. Dean stuck one hand inside the gaping slit, and rustled his hand around. He shoved his fingers past the hard edges of bone, through squishy, constantly spasming muscles, and found his way to the manically thumping heart at the center.  
Clamping his other hand over the man's mouth to quiet his agonized screaming, Dean pulled and tugged and leaned backwards until the still-beating heart was in outside, pressing against his hand like a frenzied rabbit. As it slowly sputtered to a stop, he looked over the torn muscle, the veins and arteries hanging like wilted flowers, the plaque and fat that had built up around it like a cancer.  
And then it was all gone, swirling away like mist in a windstorm. Dean looked around, only to find his next target moaning softly in front of him. He couldn't help the small grin that lifted his lips.


End file.
